Because We Can, That's Why

God is dead. Privacy is dead. Freedom is dead.  Sigh.  That's a pretty depressing revelation, don't you think?  Maybe I'll post a picture of my breakfast, or my dog, or the last theme park I visited, on Facebook and wait for all my "friends" to "like" it.  You know, all those folks whom I've never met, but were polite enough to invite me as their friend.  Maybe that thin gruel of social acceptance will placate me, and make me feel better.

The enlightened have already killed God.  It seems - to them, anyway - that it is no longer necessary for man to seek a higher authority.  We've evolved beyond that silly paternal longing.  Yet our most respected scientists have told us we are really nothing more than self aware protoplasm, and on an evolutionary scale, just a small step up from bacterium.  Well.  That's encouraging.  And this insane notion of worship-man-as-God was short lived; except perhaps within the Democrat party.  Thankfully.  To replace God, the enlightened ones have told us, we first had to acknowledge that we - mankind - was all the God we needed.  Wow.  That's a lot of gods.  And in nearly the same breath, now they tell us that we must build better artificial intelligence - superior to us - so that we may worship AI instead of ourselves or some vague, unseen creator.  I wonder by what name would we call AI - "them" or "it"?  

The technical revolution has made us aware - in no small fashion - that privacy is dead.  And the courts have upheld time and again that citizens have no expectation of privacy.  There used to be a quaint notion of privacy granted by God and guaranteed by the 4th Amendment, that Americans have "the right . . . . to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."  But we gave that away willingly.  We put our lives and soul on Facebook, for no other reason that to seek fleeting approval by others.  We allow everyone to track our every movement, and record our every utterance, just because we cannot turn off our cell phones.  We put our own eavesdropping devices in every room of our homes. Google. Echo.  Alexa.  We are not the consumer of this technology - we're the product of it.  And it's only $99 on Amazon.  Oh, and free shipping, too.

OK, what about freedom?  Have we lost that yet?  I think we have.  For example, think of all the words that you cannot use without being charged with a hate crime.  Whatever the hell that is. Think of a religion that you may not question.  Or, conversely, think of a religion that you're free - and even encouraged - to denigrate.  Say something about the evolution of certain aspects of the human race.  Or someone's perceived sexual orientation.  Speak the truth about certain political dynasties, expose their corruption and crimes, and see where you end up.  You will be ruined and broke.  You may well ask who invented the term "politics of personal destruction".  Or worse, you may find yourself on the receiving end; perhaps having a dirt nap and becoming worm food.

So perhaps there's something to be learned from the Luddites' resistance to technological innovation.  Maybe we should take a deep breath and reconsider this headlong rush into the Brave New Artificial World.  Let's have time to adapt, psychologically and socially.  Technological innovation doubles every two years, according to Moore's Law, and even that is accelerating as applied to other related technological disciplines. Heads are spinning, algorithms know more about you than your mother, cars drive themselves, drones hit targets from miles away, and media manipulate your thoughts and beliefs.  Humans have little chance against the accelerating - and inevitable - takeover of technology.

But even more, why would we do any of  this to ourselves?  Because we can, that's why.